of the clock's progress, so we recreate inequalities. Life at best is a matter of compensation; it is the disturbance of this balance which makes for injustice and inequality.

Then again, Socialism has been tried and has always resulted in the re-erection of the capitalist system. The Revolutions of France—1789, 1832, 1848, 1871—all were to usher in the millennium. But France is capitalistic today and amongst the wealthiest nations on the earth. The German Revolution, 1848, or the Spanish Revolution—all began in high hopes of republics to be ruled by Democrats. All these countries have gone back to what the world has tried and found stands best the test of time. Nations, like individuals, are impatient and do damage in fits of temper for which many years of steady care are required to effect the repairs. The world wants more religion in active life and more ostracism of the irreligious. The fear of public disgust is the beginning of ordered honesty. The strength of a public opinion is the poor man's friend. "To complain of the age in which we live; to revile the possessors of power; to lament the past; to conceive wild hopes for the future, are the common dispositions of the vast majority of men." They are also the attributes of laziness and the form of a vulgar levity. A nation must have all classes—grumblers and saints, happy and querulous, in order to make strong men.

Garvin, Lucius Fayette Clark.  (Ex-Governor of R.I.)

I am opposed to Socialism because its theory is not proved to my satisfaction. The public ownership of all artificial instruments of production, means that no interest upon capital should go to individuals. This means that the person who builds a boat to let should not own it, and that the payment made by a borrower for its use should not go to the builder, but into the public treasury.

Socialism asserts that if one person catches fifteen fish, another ten, and third but five, they are not each entitled to the proceeds of the sale of his fish. This is in violation of the natural law that the value produced is the just reward of labor.

Land values, being earned by the community, belong to the community; and economic rent should be taken by the community (in lieu of taxation) for public purposes.

The Socialist does not distinguish between the artificial and the natural instruments of production—two things wholly different in kind. He confuses the just return to capital with the unjust return to monopoly.

Long, John Luther.  (Author and Playwright.)

I don't know what you mean by mere "Socialism." I wish I did. I wish you did. But, the deuce of it is that no two persons seem to mean the same thing—or else no one knows what any one means. If it means an honest brotherhood, wherein it is recognized that all are not equal, to the end that those who are more or have more shall help those who are less and have less, I am for it with all my heart. If it means that the vicious shall profit from the just—no. If it means that the loafer shall live without work—no. For that means that some one else—many—must be working in his stead. If Socialism means that genius and idiocy must sleep in the same bed and be equals I am very much against it. We are not all equal. We are not even born equal. No pronunciamento can make us so. And if Socialism of the McNamara and Ettor and Giovannitti sort means to make us so, it might as well quit now as later. It is trying to amalgamate unamalgamables.

Esenwein, Joseph Berg.  (Author and Editor Lippincott's Magazine.)

I am opposed to Socialism because, with all its attendant weaknesses in its present unperfected state, competition is the best known stimulus to ambition. Human nature can never be essentially altered by either legislation or a new social system, therefore we shall always need competitive incentives to make us do what we can. Our present system needs decided modification, but it does not need the reversal that Socialism proposes.

Super, Charles William.  (Retired College President.)

Socialism is advocated in so many different forms that it is difficult to deal with the term intelligently without prefixing a somewhat lengthy definition. Every government is at present adopting some of the features of the Socialistic creed.

I am opposed to Socialism in so far as it hinders individual initiative and enterprise. No community ever made a great invention, or an important discovery, or created a great work of art, or planned a great enterprise. The first step forward must always be taken, or at least proposed, by some one person. I believe the State should protect those who cannot take care of themselves, especially children, and those who have proved unable to stand the strain of modern economic conditions. Those who are weak should not be left to lie helpless along the path of progress. But I do not believe government has a right to dictate how many hours an adult shall labor, or what wages his employer shall pay him. The men who have done and are still doing great things in the world have not worked a certain number of hours in twenty-four, but all the time. Socialism, to a certain extent at least, puts a premium on inefficiency. It is a serious objection to Socialism that it has proved a failure wherever it has been tried. It is a return to primitive conditions. The prospect of getting something for nothing is a strong incentive to idleness. Most men are naturally lazy. The power of the State to create value is very limited. If it provides an army of officials whose constant and ubiquitous interference with production limits the collective output, they must be paid from the earnings of individuals. This must increase the cost of living. Laws should be passed and enforced to help the weak and restrain the wicked, but they should not put too heavy a clog on those who are by nature qualified to succeed. You cannot promote the prosperity of a community by taxing the strong for the benefit of the weak, either directly or indirectly. The State should be particularly vigilant against giving any encouragement to the lazy, the shiftless and the willfully inefficient.

Krout, Mary Hannah.  (Author.)

I am opposed to Socialism because it is impossible and un-philosophical. All the measures advocated by Socialists today—or most of them—were advocated by the French in the Revolution of 1785, with disastrous results.

Hovey, Lewis R.  (Editor, The Record, Haverhill, Mass.)

I am opposed to Socialism because it is unscientific, unwise, and would destroy liberty and progress for the human race.

The bed-rock theory of Socialism is that under the present system, wealth and industry concentrates into fewer and fewer hands, that the big fish eat the little fish, and so on until society is confronted with a great proletarian class on the one hand, with nothing but their labor power, and on the other a few very rich plutocrats who own all the means of production and exchange. That this theory is unsound and unscientific is proved in a thousand ways by every blue book of every industrial nation on earth.

The number of wealth-owners in Europe has increased twice as rapidly as population during the past twenty years. In the United States we find that ownership of land, railways, banks, bonds, industrial stocks, etc., have actually increased three or four times as rapidly as the population. For